A blog about a busy stay at home Mum of four, with too many dresses and not enough wine!

Follow Blog via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 220 other followers

MY BLOG

An honest account of being a stay at home Mum of four boys. I hope to blog about the highs and lows, parenting, financial issues, budgeting, depression, panic attacks, weight struggles, weight loss, maintaining a 4st weight loss, funny stories, empty nest syndrome and much more. I would love to hear from all of you ... Thanks for reading!

Follow me on Twitter

Follow me on Instagram

Goodreads

Categories

Stay at home Mum of four boys.
J aged 18, W aged 15, S aged 11 and T aged 7
Married to P for 15 years
I have a degree in History from the Open University and a Certificate of Higher Education in Hotel and Catering Management from Oxford Brookes.
I have a near on addiction to 50s style dresses, champagne and diet coke. I also love making people laugh, even if it means making a fool of myself in the process ...

Recent Posts

inspiration

It’s taken me a while to get to this point, but I can now happily say that I love blogging. I have had a few teething problems and worried excessively about making some of my innermost thoughts public, but I’m now sure that it was all worth it. I know I’m several years late to the game, but who knew there was such a fantastic sense of community amongst bloggers? Obviously not this little Luddite, or I might have started sooner ….

I wasn’t even aware that there were blogging conferences and even blogging festivals and now I want to attend them all. Blogging has given me a voice and a chance to express myself, mostly without judgement. More importantly, it has given me a community of potential new friends to connect to. Every time I blog I gain some more followers and that makes me a very happy bunny. I have also had some wonderful comments made on my posts, which reminds me that I am not alone. When life occasionally hands me lemons, I have people ready with the proverbial Tequila!

Even when I published a post which barely made sense to me, losing my religion, I received two very helpful comments. Even though I had admitted, I wasn’t really sure whether I was coming or going, with the whole religion conundrum. (How can anyone miss, what they never really had?) Both commenters seemed to understand, exactly what I was getting at and offered me sympathy and understanding. Plus some great advice – exactly what I wanted from my post and my blog in general.

Then there are the lovely comments I get in private, inevitably life seldom turns out as expected and when things go wrong, its amazing to get such a show of support. These ones are mainly from family and friends; but when the going got tough for me, I certainly learnt who my friends were and how much I meant to them – thanks guys!

There is also something wonderful about blogging that I hadn’t been expecting – the support shown to newbie bloggers from the old hands. Everyone I have asked for advice, has been happy to help. None more so, than my lovely friend who blogs here. She’s the one who started me on my whole blogging journey and has patiently answered all of my inane questions, including ‘how do I use a hashtag on Twitter?’ We have made a pact to attend BritMums Live next year and I’m counting down the days already …. If you get the chance do read her blog, even if she wasn’t one of my dearest friends, I would wholeheartedly recommend it to you. She writes beautifully and inspires me with so many of her posts. I have been meaning to link to her blog for a while, but have only just learnt how to do so. I also now know what to do with a hashtag 😉

Help from complete strangers was unexpected. I was absolutely delighted to not only receive some much needed blogging tips from this blogger extraordinaire, but also a guest blog spot on her blog in March next year. A mere glance at her blog, shows what a busy lady she is, but she kindly took the time to respond to my email. Goodness only knows what I will write for my spot, but I have a good few months to worry about it, so big thanks to Victoria Welton who blogs here. She also runs the marvelous #pocolo linky every Friday, plus several others.

I love the like minded people that I meet through my blog or indeed through their blog. I have considered myself to be a feminist, from the moment I understood the meaning of the word. Well duh, I’m a girl therefore I’m a feminist, was my teen-aged self’s way of thinking and to be honest it still is. I love the strong undercurrent of feminism that runs through many of the blogs that I read and although I’m not sure I’m confident to blog about it just yet (need to read a few more books first) you can expect a post soon. I hadn’t expected blogging to inspire and motivate me to improve my education, I certainly underestimated the power of a great blog.

Blogging makes me feel better about myself and when I get the chance, I love clicking on the same tags that I have just used on my own post. It really does make life, just that little bit easier when you realise that you are not the only one suffering with a health complaint or from a loss of religion. Where else could you connect to fellow IBS sufferers of Mums who also have four boys and learn how to cope with life’s little/big curve balls?

There is a down side to social medial and I am mentally writing a post on that as I type, but I wanted this post to concentrate on the up side. I blog for fun, for answers, to participate in discussions, for advice, to vent, but also to make new friends. I wasn’t sure exactly what I would get from blogging and to be honest, I certainly wasn’t expecting much. Thank goodness I persevered because it really has had a positive impact on my life. I have learned so much about myself and about life in general, that I would recommend blogging to anyone

Finally a big thanks must go to my number one fan (ok, my only fan) who reads every single thing that I write and happily tells me it was amazing. I might test her one day and write something truly dire, just to see what she says. Then again she’d still support me, because she’s my sister and I’ve told her it’s her job, thanks sis!